


Hope You're Cursed Forever

by Griffy (honklust)



Category: Sugar Pine 7 RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Akrasia, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 10:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17599823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honklust/pseuds/Griffy
Summary: And my nightmares will have nightmares every nightOh, every night, every night----And there was subtext to all of that, there was an attempt to absolve Cib’s sins but there was also a genuine thing hiding underneath, something a little too real and too heavy for any of them to really say out loud. There wasI love youandI won’t let you go down like thisand, perhaps most insidiously,I don’t think you did anything wrong.





	Hope You're Cursed Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics and title from The Front Bottoms - Twin Sized Mattress
> 
> This is like the least cohesive thing I've ever written but I was overwhelmed with feelings about these boys so. Here we are.

_His hands are shaking. I’ve never seen his hands shake - not unless it’s from a hangover or something._

The look in Cib’s eyes - watery and wide and innocent and scared, like a rabbit in a trap more than a murderer kneeling beside his victim. Steven drew a deep inhale through his nose, felt something heavy and inescapable crash down across his chest - _Parker’s dead, isn’t he? Oh god. God, look at that blood._

They didn’t speak for a long time - James tried, he tried to talk but he wasn’t making sense and it didn’t matter. Cib couldn’t hear over the rush of blood in his ears, couldn’t see anything but the fear in Parker’s eyes right before he’d---

_I just pushed him,_ he’d say, later, when Steven finally got him to talk. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it, wasn’t sure he could stomach it. He didn’t say that, though. Instead, told Cib to keep his voice down and took a shaky sip from his coffee. 

_I just pushed him and he fell and the front of his head hit the table and it made this fucking noise, dude--_

_It’s alright. Hey, it’s alright, man._ And that was James, a man who had maybe killed someone else before or maybe he had just told himself that enough times that he actually believed it. He looked more serious than Steven had ever seen him, one arm slung around Cib’s shoulders, his eyes dark as slate behind his glasses.

Steven was caught thinking about how young they all were. They’d done too much, seen too much, and maybe all this was _his_ fault but-- Well. Probably not.

He thought he should probably miss Parker more. He felt kind of disgusting for _not_ missing him. Sure, Parker had been annoying and weird and pretty repulsive, but Steven didn’t want him to fucking _die._ And right when he was kind of starting to get to know him, too.

_Jesus Christ._

Cib was warm beside him - asleep finally, his shoulders heaving. James was on his other side, flanking him like security, one arm around his middle and his phone in his other hand. James had been making a lot of calls lately. Steven couldn’t find the energy to ask him why or who or what he was doing.

Cib didn’t sleep much, and they’d both become pretty sure he couldn’t sleep alone anymore. And, well, murderer or not, he was their best friend so goddamnit they’d take turns with him - James would sleep over or Cib would crash in the middle of the day in the office or they’d have a boys night and pretend not to notice Parker’s absence.

He’d stopped drinking. That was the thing that surprised Steven the most - watching Cib turn away from alcohol with that very same expression on his face - the one that haunted Steven’s every waking moment, eyes wide and dark and horribly, terribly lost.

_He looks kind of like a child, doesn’t he? Lost to himself. He doesn’t even fucking know what he did, not really. He’s so fucking dumb. God._

James kept telling Cib that it didn’t matter, that Parker was _fine,_ that he didn’t _kill_ anybody.

_Listen, man, you’re not a fucking murderer. You didn’t kill anyone. Parker’s just gone, okay? As far as any of us know, he’s gone off on his own and it’s none of our business._

And there was subtext to all of that, there was an attempt to absolve Cib’s sins but there was also a genuine thing hiding underneath, something a little too real and too heavy for any of them to really say out loud. There was _I love you_ and _I won’t let you go down like this_ and, perhaps most insidiously, _I don’t think you did anything wrong._

Steven felt a little like he was caught in some coming of age movie where a group of boys kill a man and have to band together to keep their secret.

Of course, they hadn’t helped Cib kill Parker. Just the thought of it - the concept of some kind of premeditation - made him nauseous. It made him just as nauseous as the echo of that phone call that Cib had made before he’d done it, that _I’m sorry._ There were a lot of things that made him nauseous, these days.

They hadn’t helped him kill him, they’d just helped him hide the body. And that was maybe because Parker had never mattered or maybe because Steven just didn’t have it in himself to care about anyone outside of Cib and James and maybe Autumn, although even that was a stretch.

He didn’t know when things would go back to normal, but the ugly truth was that it was sooner rather than later.

They were laughing together only two days after - the three of them running on nothing but iced coffee and snack cakes, hollow-eyed and crammed together in a booth at a late-night diner. They didn’t look suspicious, not here, not in LA. Nothing but three boys, hungover maybe, hunched over their food, two of them barely eating while James made quick, hungry work of his hashbrowns. 

He couldn’t remember who had said what, he could just remember that James had done that little snort and then Cib was laughing, high and tired, and then the three of them were giggling - maybe too much, maybe until tears were streaming down their faces and Steven had his nose buried against Cib’s shoulder but… 

But for a moment it was just the three of them laughing, just like normal, just like Parker had… never been there in the first place.

For a moment, everything was alright.


End file.
